A Religious Spirit

One of the main lies used in the church today is that those who conservatively hold to Biblical, orthodox Christianity are Pharisees with a “religious spirit.”

Wanna know something interesting about the Pharisees? They were heretics. Deviators. They weren’t orthodox in accordance to the scripture. We think of uptight jerks who pointed back to God’s law all the time, but actually, they made up their own rules and traditions and taught it as doctrine - they called it “Tradition of the Elders” which you can still read in the Talmud today. In Matthew 15 they get all mad at Jesus and the disciples for not washing their hands before eating like their derivative book said, and Jesus harshly rebuked them with:

“So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

May we never replace the all surpassing, never ending truth of God’s Word for fables and additives like the Pharisees did - and like so many false teachers and movements preach today. It PLEASES God to abide in His Word. Sure, modern Pharisees may recognize the Bible, but they also add to and subtract from it, which is a very very very dangerous proposition (Prov 30:6, Deut 4:2, Rev 22:19). May we realize that anybody that goes beyond what is written is the true Pharisee and full of actual religiousity, and in eternal danger.

I think of modern “soaking” techniques, teachers that add miracles and speaking in tongues as needed for evidence of true salvation, modern prophecy and “apostles”, prosperity heresy - all added derivatives. Just like the Pharisees.